Hazy Mirrors : A Changeover Romance
by Equilibreum Forgotten
Summary: A continuation of Margeret Mahy's The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance. What if the danger never really left, only to resurface years later.


Hazy Mirrors: A supernatural Romance.  
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She set to writing the homework assignment onto the chalkboard with slightly less enthusiasim then she had intended. Who ever said that teaching wasn't fun?  
  
"Miss. Chant?" A voice asked from the door.   
  
Laura turned to the door and looked quizicaly at her assistant. "Yes?"   
  
"There's a message for you to wait in your office." Shery cheerfully.   
  
"Is there any reason why this couldn't wait until the end of this class?" Laura asked keeping her fustration in tact.   
  
"Um... It's about an important personal appointment." She said with a wink and a grin.   
  
'Dear lord! What now?' "Oh, ok. Forget the assighment complete your evaluations on powers of the mental psyche, those have to be in by next week. NO SLACKING! Class dismissed!"   
  
With this 65 young people stood up and left the class room.   
  
Laura compiled her documents and tucked them under her arm. After closing the windows, drawing the shades and locking the door she headed for her office.   
  
Stepping into the large hallow room she sighed. The only personal thing was a enlarged photo that sat nestled into a poster frame in some symbolic version of a family portrait. She had known all about symbolicy in her life. The photo was originaly a cheap poloroid that was taken at Kate, her mother, and Chris, her step father's, wedding. Her brother, a strapping youth of ten stood in frozen time trying to blow a length of his shaggy blond hair out of his face. Laura had been the maid of honor as well as given her mother away. The picture was proof that after six years she had finally accepted the couple's relationship and was willing to open her arms to them both happily.   
  
A tall young man with a neat blond hair cut and strange gray eyes stood next to Laura, his hand wrapped around her waist in a friendly gesture his gentle smile directed at her. Sorenson Carlisle. It still hurt to think about. True to his word he had become a ecologist; a lead research member for the national EPA. This of course meant that he had to leave and live in Wellington, leaving Laura broken on the gravel path of Juana Caeli.  
  
For the longest of time Laura had used his family like a crutch. Often staying for supper and helping them cast random spells when they needed a third. Eventually; uninevidably perhaps; she was accepted to a profound university in Auckland and had left, occasionally sending a letter to her fellow witches when ever she was feeling melancholy. Soon those occasions became a mere letter twice a year, one at Sping and another during christmas. But always she had recieved responses.   
  
Even now, Laura woundered what ever happened to Sorry. Miryam and old Winter had never gotten a single letter or phone call from him while she was in Gardendale.   
  
"Sorenson Carlisle, you troublesome thorn of a witch, where are you?" She said brushing her index finger over his smiling face.   
  
Suddenly the photo shifted his face staring at her and with all of the over hyped ego of the real deal, winked. Laura yelped and jumped back, striking her leg on her desk.   
  
"Prepare yourself Laura, you've been warned again." She said to herself in trans-like shock. Rapping at the door should of started her from her thoughts but she was so deep into the last 'Warning' She had had. It was shortly before Christopher had his stroke.   
  
She only came out of her mental degenerative state when she felt a large slender hand grip her shoulder softly. 'Hello, Chant.'   
  
The two words wouldn't have bothered her so much, it wasn't uncommon for people to call her by her surname, but rather it was the fact that she hadn't heard the words at all. She had thought them. And strangely with that all to familiar voice.   
  
"Sorenson!" She gasped turning around only to be enveloped in an emense hug. After several long embraces she looked up into his face only to find that the sphinx-like stairways had grown into a straight and narrow path, and judging by the redness of his eye lids, it led to a very sad place.   
  
"What? What is it?" Laura asked.   
  
Immediantly Sorensons face broke into an expression of emense pain. He tried to speak but his voice choked up.   
  
'Well, it's several things, Chant.'   
  
'What?'  
  
'Something has... well... stolen your brother.'  
  
'Jon?'  
  
'Yes.' at this point he let out a stifled sob. 'Miryam and Winter are...'  
  
"Are they connected?" Laura asked her eyes growing wide with fear.   
  
"I.. I b-belive so." He choked out, his distress blowing breath into his long dead stutter.   
  
Laura's knees grew weak and she started to fall but Sorry reached out and somehow caught her.   
  
"What...what happened?"   
  
Sorenson took a few moments to calm himself. "Your brother remembers that lumure. He still remembers Carmondy Braque and what you did for him. He kept seeing it in his dreams. Finally, it appears, he went to Miryam and Winter for some sort of confirmation and of course they told him the truth." He stopped and looked at Laura for a moment. "Laura, he shouldn't have known anything. The only way that he would know is if that danger was still real. What if Carmony Braque never really left your brother."   
  
This was to much. Surely it was true of course, Sorenson would never show up unannounced and play such a horrible trick. After all of the parel and the suffering, watching him collapse into fits of seizure-like spasms and feeling the little boy withen himself close up and hide, too afraid to come out into the light for so long; only to have it fail. And now... Now this thing had taken them and it was time to fight the Lumure once again and she knew that it would not be an easy battle.   
  
"Oh I'm sorry." She said sorrowfully.  
  
"No, I'm-"  
  
"Now is not the time." She said annoyed.   
  
"I have emergancy leave." She said and grabbed her coat off of her chair and started to the door.  
  
"Where are you going?" He asked   
  
"Gardendale."   
  
She heard him jump up and fallow her. They went down to the parking lot where Laura looked at him somberly. "I live on campus...where's your car?"  
  
He raised a brow and pointed at an antique electrolite motorcycle.   
  
"You've got to be kidding me!" She said   
  
"Well it beats the vespa."   
  
Having no choice or time to argue she waited for him to get on and she slipped in behind him. 


End file.
